We Will Resist

A poem by Jess Semaan

We will resist. I insist.

We will resist

The killers of the flower blooms

The hunters of the flying doves

The thieves of childhood

The bullies of Tel Aviv

We will resist

Till our last breath

We will lose our jobs

Whoever we thought were friends will wither

We will write poems, papers, studies, research

We will tell our people’s stories in all its details

We will resist

We will simplify our lives, we will question greed

We will pray for strength when the despair is near

We will speak truth to power

We will speak truth as our mother tongue

We will be cancelled

We will be ghosted

We will be insulted

But we will never feel shame

We will risk it all

For our kin

We feel proud

And we will resist

I insist.

The Formula

A poem by Jess Semaan

Death by shrapnel

Cuts your limbs

Escape shrapnels

Come to America

Marry to stay

Pay to stay

Or fail to stay

Come to America

Die a million way

But die slow

Here is a formula

Leave a home

Because war

And never return

Because war

Die slow

Because war

In America

There is no war

But

There is

a bullet in your spine

poison in your water

chemicals in your food

In America

You will be asked to grow

Without water or sun

You will wither

And they will say

But we gave water and sun

It must be their bodies

In The West

A poem by Jess Semaan

In the west, where the sun sets I hold my breath and wait

For the people of the west to tell me which bodies are for waste and which bodies are worth a wake

In the west, I learn compartmentalization and other complicated terms.

I unlearn my body as home.

In the west where the sun does not rise, you can smell blood on hands and pumpkin spice on breath

In the west, you say: _____ died

You do not say: _____ got killed

You do not ask: who killed _____

In the west, sophisticated weapons breed in labs, a portion of the profits donated to museums of stolen arts

In the West, Arabs are muslims and muslims are Arabs

In the west where the sun sets, you will learn hypocrisy from masters

Lying is a sport, and football is soccer

In the west where the sun sets, is stolen land, a very sad place with many ways to numb

The formula.

Escape shrapnels

Come to America

Die slow

Watch a war

From afar

Buy decoration

Die slow

Repeat after me

I am in a land of the free

Let Gaza In

Poem by Jess Semaan

Let yourself be moved by the pain of Gaza. Let the injustice break you and change you. Crack your heart open in ways you did not foresee were possible.

Let Gaza be a teacher. Let Gaza remind you and show you truth. Let Gaza be a rememberance that liberation is not for everyone. That whose life is valuable is political.

Let Gaza dismantle the myths of freedom for all, of revered western values, of free media, of so called democracies.

Let Gaza in. Let Gaza be the last time. Let Gaza be the last place. Let Gaza be the real never again.

Silence

A poem by Jess Semaan

Silence. There is a genocide. I mean a sale, a holiday sale, a one day holiday sale. For every body, ten bodies. For everybody, a sale.

Silence. There is a truce. There is a truth no one will tell you, the truth is our blood is not for sale.

Silence. There is a sale.

100 bodies for unlimited oil

1,000 bodies for “I don’t have capacity for this”

10,000 bodies for more land to settle

100,000 bodies for small talk and yoga classes, uninterrupted

1,000,000 bodies for never having to ask why

Silence. There is a genocide and a sale. I mean there is no genocide, only a sale. Only a sale and apathy and irony and cruelty.

For Your Comfort

A poem by Jess Semaan

Bury me for your comfort, but don’t spoil your delicate hands. Leave me to rot on the side of a highway.

I will die and say I am alive; I will testify suicide for your comfort.

Erase the lines of my forehead. I will tear down ancestry lines for your comfort. I the pencil and you the bulldozer. We the books you the fire.

For your comfort, change my name to relax your tongue. Turn me into a smiling Christmas Holiday card. Wish me Happy Holidays.

For your comfort, drown me in your tears. And when they dry, soak the tears from my eyes and leave me thirsty, hungry begging at your door.

For your comfort, I will sit and listen to you until you dispose of me, I will say it wasn’t you who disposed of me. I was a threat and you were an angel.

For your comfort, somewhere someone will finish me.

Hummus is four ingredients

A poem by Jess Semaan

Hummus is now Khummus

And Ghazza is now Gaza

Ghazza is now a mass grave

And the sea is a high rise view, of a European traveler.

The audience is lazy

The visitors are lazy

The travelers are lazy

And the settlers are cruel.

Is a story always propaganda?

Who do we write for except ourselves?

I press lemons from my neighbor's tree

I pour in tahini from the Arab store

Except the tahini is not Arab

Sprinkle coarse salt from Greece

Can I walk from Beirut to Jerusalem?

Or will Beirut to Jerusalem be forever a name of a book I was once required to read?

I take three flights to return home.

I still wear a dress in Beirut

For Beirut is festive even in death.

The lemon, the tahini, a can of Whole Foods chickpeas, the greek salt

Hummus is four ingredients

Khummus is a stolen dish

I find unexpected pleasure emphasizing the ح in hummus

A ح will never be a خ

And the hummus will never be yours

And the land will never be yours

And the story will never be yours

Here is a passed down secret

Put an ice in cube the hummus as soon as it’s done

And let it melt

And here you have your creamy hummus

I see avocado khummus, chocolate khummus, pesto khummus

at the store.

Appropriation is not innovation.

The other secret to hummus is

To be eaten the same day

Here is the truth about hummus

it is not Israeli

Never will be